Peter Hitchens: With Jeremy Corbyn Smug Tories Should Be Careful What They Wish For

Journalist and author Peter Hitchens hits the target again. In his latest column for the Mail On Sunday he warns “smug Tories” of the dangers to them of the “bearded Lefty” Jeremy Corbyn winning the Labour leadership election, further reinforcing points previously made by Breitbart London.

The Editor in Chief of Breitbart Londondescribed Jeremy Corbyn as “an apologist for some horrendous regimes” who “values his politics over his country” but who might “actually might make Labour attractive again to many of their disenfranchised core vote”. It seems the message might be getting out there.

With one week to go before voting kicks off Corbyn finds himself back as favourite to win the Labour Party leadership, at least so far as the betting money goes. The latest polling is due later this week but it seems that his opponents in the race are also beginning to conclude he might win it (see tweet below). This is significant because they will have their own private polling data to analyse ahead of publicly available results.

Hitchens sets out two doom-laden scenarious for the Conservative Party if it finds itself facing a Labour opposition led by Corbyn. First:

“…the constant risk that George Osborne’s supposed recovery finally runs out of luck, and is revealed as the conjuring trick that it is.

“In that case, a bearded radical Left party might do surprisingly well, as they have found in Greece and are finding in Spain. A serious dose of unemployment and a spate of bank failures can make the unelectable electable quite quickly.”

Secondly:

“…the risk that Mr Osborne’s alleged recovery doesn’t run out of luck, and the Tories face and trounce a Corbynised Labour Party at the next Election.

“That would probably do for Labour as an organisation once and for all. Destroyed in Scotland and flattened in England, it would no longer be able to raise serious money or act as a proper opposition.

“And if Labour collapses and splits, as it then well might do, the Tories will quickly be in deep trouble. They will lack an enemy. And as Nato found out after the break-up of the Soviet Union, that is a cruel fate.”

Hitchens recognises that the Nato analagy is inexact. For that organisation “there is always a sinister bogeyman somewhere on the planet, usually with a beard or moustache, who can be portrayed as a menace”, but warns that the Tories are not so lucky. For the leadership of the party, in many cases, the enemy does not lie without but within. He continues:

“The party’s leaders hate the members and despise their voters. The members and the voters mistrust the leaders. The party’s MPs are a brawling coalition ranging from the Gay Liberation Front and fanatical feminism to the outer edges of Ukip. The only thing that keeps this unprincipled, nonsensical mechanism from flying apart is universal hatred and fear of Labour.

“The only slogan that really worked for them in 2010 was ‘We have to get Gordon Brown out!’ The only slogan that really worked in 2015 was ‘Stop Red Ed!’ Something similar will certainly work well against Mr Corbyn in 2020, unless we are all queuing for food banks by then (don’t rule it out).”

It is at the point of Labour’s crushing defeat in 2020 where Hitchens warns the real doomsday scenario materialises for the Tories.

Not only will there be no “bearded socialist voter-repellent“, Red Ed or Gordon Brown, there’ll be nothing more than a “bankrupt rump” of a party to fight against. Lacking external enemies, the broad church Conservative Party will then fight itself. Hitchens predicts it could even destroy itself by 2025, concluding:

“I wouldn’t be at all sorry about that. Today’s Tory Party is indistinguishable from Blairite New Labour, and is probably more Marxist in practice than Jeremy Corbyn is in theory.”

Hitchens’ latest jeremiad for the Conservative Party may prove to be wrong in the course of time, but if he is even partially correct then he is right to warn “smug Tories” the damaging effects of a Corbyn victory will be felt way beyond the Labour Party.